How can you present yourself ?

Nowadays I present myself as a choreographer and a dancer.

You are teaching a lot about improvisation and the way dance can exist without a stage and in others contexts. Can you explain your choice ?

When I was a student at the School for New Dance Development in Amsterdam, there was not really classes about dance outside stage but nevertheless I still relate it to that time because I think it was already there in my mind even if it was not the style of the school. In the end of the nineties with a friend of mine I began to interview people in the streets, and asked them to answer my questions by dancing or moving. My friend was a media artist and she did the videos. Some years later I started a project « about to dance » and I began to think more seriously about my questions before going in the streets. So that was the part one. By that time the end of the nineties I have moved by a small town in Finland and there is no real space to perform or to make dance in here, so you have to do it in a gallery space or a shopping mall space. So it can be that one reason purely and simple because there was no stage. Another reason is that working as a dancer and artist in diffrent environments and contexts is very interesting.

In parallel I went on stopping people in the streets and kindly asked them to answer to my questions in moving. By that time I have started to really think about how dance exists in society, how dance can come out in society and how do we experience dance, what do we take as dance. All these questions lead me to university more as a hobby to study sociology and sociology of art and to see if there is a dialogue between art and society.

Are your sociology studies the link which leads you to ask politicians questions they have to answer by dancing ?

Yes, I started thinking about dance in the society and after how those members of parliament who are representing different political parties and who are taking decisions in cultural matters could be able to answer my questions by dancing. I was curious about the way they can respond because in a way they are representing the finish society, they are leading the country.

PIa Lindy, Oh lightness ! photo Annuska Dal Maso.

So I suppose your first expectation was : would they say yes or no ?

Yes, I send emails to different members of parliement and asked them if they agree to be interviewed and I said what I was doing with that project « about to dance » and I promise not to talk about money and not to make fun of them because it’s not a comical thing. Most of them are bureaucrats and they work inside and it was also how to bring the politicians out of the buildings and all the interviews were made outside, there is no talking just the sounds of the outside in the videos, it was like movements talks and like that we can figure out how noisy it is in Helsinky just outside the Parliement.

Seventeen people accepted to be interviewed. The video lasts a bit more than 13mn30’ some participants said how it change their perception of their own bodies and in general it gave a positive vision of the finish politicians. It was one of the feedback we got.

About to dance swing of politics, Pia Lindy, Sini Haapalinna.

In the autumn 2007 Pia Lindy & media artist Sini Haapalinna made interviews with Finnish politicians. About to Dance, swing of politics had its premier in the Finnish parliament in March 2008.